From the moment the NCAA acknowledged it had no choice other than allowing college athletes to earn income from their name, image and likeness, it has been trying to thread a needle.
“The member schools have embraced very real change that is necessary to modernize our name, image and likeness rules,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said. “We also see the challenges in front of us.” Here are five questions and answers about what the NCAA did and didn't do Wednesday and some of the thorny issues that could come up over the next several months.Last fall, the NCAA Board of Governors tasked a working group led by Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith and Big East commissioner Val Ackerman with collecting feedback on how to modernize name, image and likeness rules and then come up with a set of recommendations.
In essence, the NCAA is going to try to build a system that would require athletes to disclose their name, image and likeness income and then monitor for irregularities. College coaches and pro athletes, for instances, do all kinds of national and local endorsements at rates negotiated by their agents that are largely based on comparable contracts. The same principle would apply here.
“It’s a new space in our world,” Smith said. “We know this is a new business, so to speak, so having historical data to try to ascertain what is appropriate compensation for someone who might be paid for X number of mentions relative to a particular business over a two-week period still has to be evaluated.”No, at least not for awhile.
How that wild card plays into the timing of a bill, not to mention the upcoming election cycle, is unclear.